My Life as a Football Mom

My 9-year-old son Nicklas is a sports nut. He wants to participate in every conceivable sport, and so far he’s been involved in soccer, basketball, baseball, swimming and tai-kwon-do. But this summer he decided that he wants to play football – not flag football, but real football, with full equipment. That did not make me happy. I consider football to be a dangerous sport that promotes aggression. I know this is heresy in the U.S. (and especially in Champaign, Illinois), but I have never been able to understand the appeal of that game; to me it looks pointless. All I see are two groups of big guys standing opposite each other. At a given signal they charge, struggling to knock each other down, until the referee blows his whistle. Then they withdraw, until it’s time to start over again. Somewhere in all this, there’s a ball floating around, but how anyone can keep track of that is beyond my comprehension.

However, Nicklas is convinced that he is the next Eli Manning, and who am I to crush his dreams, so when he brought home a flyer about a new football league in town, I agree to sign him up. But I knew we would have problems when I saw that all the important parent meetings and equipment handouts were scheduled in mid-July, while we were on vacation. I had to scramble to get everything done as soon as we got home, and we immediately started out with practices every single night for two weeks. Most of the parents actually camp out at the practice field, watching the kids from 6:00 – 7:30 pm. Who has time for that? I, on the other hand, rush home from work, rush Nicklas to practice, rush home to cook dinner, rush back to pick him up… you get the picture (OK, some days my husband comes home from work early enough to pick him up – yes, he usually works that late).

To make matters worse, we had scheduled a trip to South Dakota on the weekend of the first game, so I had to tell the coach that Nicklas wouldn’t be there. That was OK, but there was another problem – Nicklas hadn’t been weighed on the official scale that the football league is using. (Actually, he was weighed when he got his equipment, but the person who weighed him forgot to record it.) So I get an email from the coach saying that he has to report on Saturday morning to be weighed. Well, that wasn’t possible since we would be out of town. The coach gives me the name and phone number of a person to call in order to resolve this matter. I have no idea who this person is, but I call him and start explaining the problem. It turns out that he is the president of the football league, he has no time for small matters like this, and he certainly has no patience for ignorant people like me.

Nicklas must be weighed on this particular scale, which is on loan from the wrestling team for just one day. I try to ask if he could be weighed at a different scale, or if they could just go by the weight that was recorded when he had a sports physical in June. But no, that’s not OK. I ask the guy what I’m supposed to do, and he finally has had enough of me and yells, “It’s your own fault, you choose to be out of town when football season has started.” Uh oh, I’m afraid we just don’t have the level of commitment it takes to be a dedicated football family.

But then I see my son in his full football gear, broad shoulders, padded pants, and a big helmet. I see him come out of practice drenched with sweat, not complaining one bit about the hard work and rough tumbling. I see his excitement when the coach tells him that he is one of the fastest players and a valuable addition to the team. And I can’t help being a little bit proud of my budding quarterback. Maybe we can get used to this after all.